Unheard
by Roses of Sharon
Summary: The kunoichi remember a time when they didn’t have to lie to themselves, every moment of every day. Part V: Temari.
1. Study I: Tenten

_Summary:_ The kunoichi remember a time when they didn't have to lie to themselves, every moment of every day. Part I: Tenten.

_Author's Note_: I realized recently that you can find the same themes in nearly all my stories, especially about kunoichi. I'm still trying to figure out whether that's good or not.

_Chapter Summary_: She is kunoichi and this is how it is, and as she shatters she pretends she doesn't.

_Disclaimer_: I do not own _Naruto_.

Unheard:

_Study I: Tenten_

Tenten is more shinobi than kunoichi, because she does not paint her face and put on fancy kimonos and let her hair down. Tenten does the shinobi's job, maybe because she never needed to be kunoichi, maybe because she never wanted to. But it has never been asked of her to be the "distraction," and maybe it never will, because Neji would take it as a personal offense that they even needed a distraction, and Lee would cry rivers of tears and destroy the environment, so she has never brought it up. (Or, perhaps, she has never brought it up because she does not dare to, does not want to know the answers, because the little lies she lives in are all she has.)

But she knows that if it were ever to be asked of her, she would agree, because being shinobi – and kunoichi – is her life. Is more than her life. So she would agree, for duty and for loyalty, and never question, because the mission comes above all. The mission_ is _all.

But, still, Tenten breaks and Tenten screams and Tenten cries, because even if she is shinobi, she cannot be heartless and kill without mercy, without doubt. And even if she is kunoichi, she cannot hide her feelings behind a flawlessly gracious mask.

And yet she does, because she is shinobi and she is kunoichi and this is how it is. This is how it goes, and as she shatters she pretends she doesn't and wonders how she let this happen.

But that doesn't mean that she has to like it, so she doesn't.

(And one day, she thinks, one day she will be free. It is the only thing she has left to hope for, the one wish that she does not want granted, and the one dream she knows will be left unfulfilled.)


	2. Study II: Hinata

_Summary:_ The kunoichi remember a time when they didn't have to lie to themselves, every moment of every day. Part II: Hinata.

_Author's Note_: I got this idea while writing _The Thread of Destiny_, so they're sort of linked. The characters are very similar, though I didn't really go into character interaction and development in _The Thread of Destiny_. Still, it would totally please me if you went and read that one as well! And to people with me on alerts, I'm sorry for spamming your inboxes with oneshots that you probably never read all the time!

_Chapter Summary_: Hinata, they think, could have survived as _civilian_. As _normal_.

_Disclaimer_: I do not own _Naruto_.

Unheard:

_Study II: Hinata_

Hinata is the one who could have been "normal," who maybe could have lived in Konohagakure and watched the shinobi and kunoichi in their comings and their goings and never wanted more than the simple life, never wanted more than a home, a husband, children, and maybe a flower garden in the back, with lilies and climbing vines and roses.

Instead, she is one of the shinobi, and she is being watched in her comings and goings by awe-filled children and envious adolescents and respectful elders. She does not have a home, just an estate; or a family, just a clan; and the garden she can keep, but there are no sweet, innocent flowers in it, just poisons and cures and weapons. She tries not to see the symbolism, the irony, in this – but Byakugan sees everything, even when she willingly closes her eyes to it.

Hinata could have been happy, even, in the place where Sakura is. Not as the Godaime Hokage's apprentice, certainly, but as a medic. She could have loved and cared for hurt children, helped her comrades, comforted the weak and elderly. She would have mended bones instead of breaking them, healed wounds instead of creating them.

Instead, she breaks and she wounds and she kills. She is kunoichi, and she is paid to break the law, to break bones, to break hearts. She is Hyuuga, so where her duties as a kunoichi to Konoha end, there the duties of an heiress to her House begin.

Hyuuga Hinata could never have been happy as kunoichi. But that is who she is.


	3. Study III: Ino

_Summary:_ The kunoichi remember a time when they didn't have to lie to themselves, every moment of every day. Part III: Ino.

_Chapter Summary_: Ino is the perfect kunoichi.

_Disclaimer_: I do not own _Naruto_.

Unheard:

_Study III: Ino_

Ino may be the perfect kunoichi. Or she just pretends very well. And pretending means letting no one see the salty tears running down her cheeks, letting no one realize the pain in her heart, letting no one hear her scream, letting no one see her skin, scrubbed raw after each and every kunoichi mission. Being the perfect kunoichi, she thinks, is about not letting people see. (And they don't want to see, anyways, so it's not that hard to hide.)

Outside, her face is composed, her movements graceful, her words sharp and precise. Outside, she has purpose and direction, a goal and a future. Inside, she is a mess. She's hysteria and panic and pandemonium and confusion, all wrapped up in one, unable to express how she feels. Inside, she is clueless. "Where am I going?" she asks herself. "What to do, where to go, what to say? Should I say anything at all?"

(Her existence, she thinks, is based on questions.)

But she is the perfect kunoichi, and so she smiles and nods, gracious and graceful, and honey-sweet barbs drip from her painted lips like venom.

She is the type of blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty that, almost effortlessly, can make men think of Death as a friend, who has men eating out of her poison-tipped hands, ready to do her bidding.

Or so she seems.

(They don't recognize the work that it takes to be beautiful. _Beauty is Pain_.)

And the only reason she is able to do this, is able to be this, is because she has systematically killed everything in her that hopes for more, everything in her that dreams and wishes and _prays _for more.

And she slides on her mask, and hides the emptiness (_'cuz what does she have ,if she doesn't have herself?_) and smiles – bravely, flirtatiously, falsely.


	4. Study IV: Sakura

_Summary:_ The kunoichi remember a time when they didn't have to lie to themselves, every moment of every day. Part IV: Sakura.

_Chapter Summary_: Sakura doesn't know who to blame, sometimes.

_Disclaimer_: I do not own _Naruto_.

Unheard:

_Study IV: Sakura _

Sakura doesn't know why she is kunoichi. It was just another not-choice, another question to which the answer was already known. She has tried to piece it together, on those cold, lonely nights when she has decided to forgo the almost-ritual of wearing tight skirts and four-inch heels and getting drunk, flirting with a stranger, and is instead lying, cold and alone and forgotten, in her bed.

She has decided that it is partially Ino's fault. Ino, who was beautiful and worldly and popular, everything that Sakura was not but so wanted to be. Where Ino led, she thinks almost bitterly, she followed. And Yamanaka Ino was destined to be kunoichi, one of the best, and Haruno Sakura was destined to follow.

And here it becomes Sasuke-kun's fault. Sasuke, who she threw her heart and soul and life at, who rejected it all. Sasuke, for whom she changed her destiny – from Ino's follower to the weakest link of Team Seven, a member in nothing but name. Not much better, she thinks. Not better at all. But he was Uchiha Sasuke, and to her, that was enough.

Here, she thinks, it is hard to tell whose fault it became. Naruto, who dragged her out of depression and on with life? Tsunade-shishou, who taught her to be a weapon, who was like another mother to her?

If it weren't for them, then perhaps she would not longer be kunoichi – perhaps, she would never have been kunoichi.

She would be normal, maybe own a bookstore or diner, and a couple cats. She might never have faced bandits and assassins, never faced death and stared him down. She would never have had sex with a stranger, only to kill him afterwards.

Sakura wasn't born to the life of a kunoichi.

She wishes now that she hadn't chosen it.


	5. Study V: Temari

Summary: The kunoichi remember a time when they didn't have to lie to themselves, every moment of every day

_Summary:_ The kunoichi remember a time when they didn't have to lie to themselves, every moment of every day. Part V: Temari

_Chapter Summary_: Temari _remembers_, and it shows her what she does not have.

_Disclaimer_: I do not own _Naruto_.

Unheard:

_Study V: Temari_

Kankurou doesn't remember – doesn't recall their mother, or, really, their father (before Gaara). He doesn't remember her softness – the way her fingers weren't callused anymore, after years of working in the house and not in the desert. Doesn't remember her soft, quiet voice; the way she had of talking. Always gentle and soft and calm, a rarity in this desert.

This desert, that makes its men into monsters and its women into kunoichi.

But she swears that she will never let her brother be anything more than _shinobi. _And later, when she realizes that she has already failed – that neither of her brothers need her and that _Gaara_, who lay in his crib so quietly and never cried even when she, in her clumsiness and inexperience, mishandled him, was _Shukaku._ And that Kankurou, who ate her horrible food in the beginning – complained, and ate it anyways – was the _puppet master_, she begins to fight.

She fights a losing battle, she knows, because all around her is loss. All around her, Sunagakure is falling_falling_falling.

The Sand is strong, and the Sand produces shinobi and kunoichi like Konohagakure produces grass, but Konoha, she sees, has _heart. _Konoha breathes and loves and believes.

And Konoha may be undermanned, as Sand will never be, but Konoha will never give up, will never fight among itself, will always believe. And she sees this even with the Uchiha Massacre, and she sees this even after Akatsuki and Sound and everything horrible that has ever occurred, she sees this.

Konoha will not ever lose, because its people believe.

Sand already has.


End file.
